Can You Still Be Cool Once You're A Father? Just Ask This Pro Skateboarder

Chris Cole is one busy dude. The pro skateboarder and street league X-Games champ is also an entrepreneur, BMX team co-owner and proud father of two. Like many successful skateboarders, his early-career success gave him the freedom to pursue a lot of opportunities — sponsorships, board and clothing lines, travel — at a young age; unlike some, he’s deployed this freedom energetically, dodging the temptation to use that freedom to shirk responsibility and living by his personal motto, “live rad and die proud.”

We talked to Chris about fatherhood, the power of the to-do list, and acting like a grown-up in the skateboarding scene.

AskMen (AM): You have a ton going on: the skateboarding career, a few different clothing and product spin-offs, numerous companies, a bike team, so I’m wondering how you make it work — to get all these things done and still be there for everyone who needs you?

Chris Cole (CC): Terribly. It’s funny, because I’m kind of seen as this person who holds it all together, when in reality my wife holds it together, and I’m racing back and forth trying to figure things out. I focused so heavily on this one thing that I did, and I got really good at it by doing that, but there are all these skills that you build up through your life, like time management, that I don’t have. I don’t have that at all. Right now, I’m still learning how to be a grown-up, I’m learning how to manage my time.

It’s a fine balance but I find that scheduling does it; scheduling works. Skateboarding has brought so many things, so many opportunities… to take away time from skateboarding. So I have meetings about skateboarding and all these things around skateboarding, but I have to schedule in time to skateboard. I try to write all these lists because I’ve had ADD my entire life, and so getting through a full thought without a music lyric popping in and just derailing my whole entire train of thought means I have to create a list. But then I have to create a sub-list off those things somehow to get them done — and it works great. That’s the only way that I actually hold anything together.

AM: Me too. I’m a to-do lister.

CC: I actually saw a lady on a flight that I was on, and she had tattoos, like my wife, all down her arms. But one thing she had right here (points to his wrist), it said "To Do," and then it had a line and a line and a line, and it had little checkboxes next to the lines on her wrist. So she just had it there and she’d just write in her to-do list. Tattoos! That was actually pretty awesome.

AM: It seems like you’ve really made a point of leading a certain kind of lifestyle and trying to be a positive influence.

CC: I think that a lot of skaters are given the freedom to not have to grow up, so they prolong their childhood and do what they want, when they want because there’s an income coming in whether they’re at work or not. So they get this freedom, as a rich 19-year-old kid who’s never had to work, just play, and they get a pat on the back for being, like, wasted and stuff like that.

A lot of them don’t see fatherhood in a manner that’s realistic, they look at it like, "Man this is a burden, I can’t do what I want whenever I want." My life is a bit different than that. I’ve kind of realized that that becomes your role in life. I mean, you still have your life, but your number one job is for you to better your children and hope that they become great people. I think if we all do that as parents and we all do it successfully, then we have a better entire world and not just a whole bunch of people that pull up to a stop sign and all have the right of way — it’s their turn, because they want it to be.